


Lone Wulf

by MrProphet



Category: Strontium Dog
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 00:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10708194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Lone Wulf

Wulf Sternhammer stared angrily into his ale pot, his hulking form hunched forward over the drink. It was among the most disgusting drinks that even he, in his extensive experience of the galaxy’s wide array of alcoholic beverages, had ever tasted, but he was nonetheless knocking it back; or had been.

“Give me another,” he insisted.

“I’m sorry, sir/madam/other,” the robot bartender replied. “My internal log indicates that you have consumed more than fifteen units of alcohol within a three hour duration and must therefore be medically dead. My programming forbids me to serve deceased patrons. Debts can not be enforced against the dead.”

“Ahh! I am not dead you verdankt machine!” Wulf slammed his fist down on top of the robot’s head. “You feel that? Is that der punch of a dead man?”

“My circuits do not allow me to make such distinctions, sir/madam/other.”

“Alright, alright.” Wulf stood up and staggered towards the door. “I vill find another bar vere they vill serve der  _dead man_ ,” he spat.

From a corner booth, narrow, slit-pupilled eyes watched him go. “You do not know how right you are, dead man,” Snake-Eyes Martinez hissed. “Firssst you will die, then Alpha. Together you were sssupposed to be unssstoppable; alone, you are dead meat.”

*

Martinez left the bar and hurried out of the town of New Starfall into the wild badlands of the Barrens. Here the steep, rocky hillsides grew thick with strangling bloodthorns, their long creepers studded with blood-red spines as thick as a man’s wrist. Anyone who did not know their way in this desolate wasteland would quickly be torn apart by the thorns, but Martinez had walked these paths many times.

He slipped swiftly up into the higher hills, where the remains of Old Starfall rotted away.

The old settlement had been the first established on Acker’s Planet. The hilltops had seemed safe from the native bloodthorns and dracosaurs, but after a year the ground had collapsed under it. Ten thousand colonists were killed. Only the rich deposits of Uranium in the Low Barrens kept people trying.

Old Starfall lay empty for years, before El Scorpion and his gang moved in. The weird, crimson mists that swirled about the ruins drove others away, but the bandits thrived on them.

For nine years, El Scorpion and his gang of vicious, mutant gunfighters preyed on the miners of New Starfall. They killed eight sheriffs and seventeen bounty hunters before Wulf Sternhammer and his partner, Johnny Alpha, came to town. Within a day, they had killed Cactus Jack and Coyote Girl. After a week, six more of the gang were dead, including Forked-Tongue Martinez, Snake-Eyes’ little brother.  
Alpha and Sternhammer; they were legendary in their profession, but even though none of El Scorpion’s fighters could touch them, they could not take down El Scorpion either; the bloodthorns around Old Starfall were too thick, and there were the Well-Kin.

Martinez found El Scorpion hunched over the Well. His long, segmented tail twitched impatiently. “I see you aren’t dead yet, Martinez. Have you killed the Strontium Dogs yet?”

“No, sssir, but…”

“I thought I told you not to come back while they lived?”

“I know, sssir, but I have good news.”

El Scorpion turned his face towards Snake-Eyes. Fifty black, cold eyes bored into Martinez’ soul. “It had better be good,” he whispered.

“Oh it isss. Alpha has finally grown tired of trying to break through the bloodthorn thicketsss. He and Sssternhammer have argued and parted waysss. Sssternhammer is dead drunk. We can kill him now and pick off Alpha at our liesssure.”

For the first time in weeks, El Scorpion smiled his mirthless smile. “Excellent. Get the rest of the boys; we’ll take Sternhammer tonight and then send Alpha a little invite.”

*

Wulf was standing at the door of his room in the hotel, trying to work out who would have stolen the keyhole, when they came for him. He heard the steps in the corridor behind him and turned, drawing his blaster.

“So; you vant some of vat your friends got, eh?” 

The bandits rushed him in a mob. He fired, but the first shot flew wide and then Tarant Ella dropped on him from the ceiling. Wulf Sternhammer was strong, but he was heavily outnumbered and drunk and he was soon pinned and bound, with only a few bruises and three broken arms – all of them Tarant Ella’s – to his account.

“Let’sss go,” Martinez hissed. “El Ssscorpion wantsss to sssee you.”

*

Wulf did not scare easily, but the eerie red mist was disconcerting. “Vat is this place?” Wulf groaned, clutching his head. “It stinks like der pits of Muspel.”

“This is the Well,” El Scorpion told him, looming out of the mist like a nightmare given flesh.

“Verdammt!” Wulf recoiled in alarm.

“You find my appearance appalling? You seem remarkably unaltered for a Strontium Dog.”

“I am not a mutant,” Wulf replied, “but neither do I hate them. I save my hatred for der murders and der thieves.”

“Sticks and stones,” El Scorpion chuckled. “String him up!”

The bandits shackled him to long chains and hoisted him up so that he dangled over the Well, a deep pit from which the mist rose. In the crimson murk beneath him, dark forms coiled and writhed.

“Those are the Well-Kin,” El Scorpion explained. “They are born from the Well; I don’t know how. They are the ones who drove you back from the forest of thorns. You’ll soon see them up close when we drop you in. Maybe you’ll even find out where they come from… before they rip you to pieces.”

“Bandit scum!” Wulf spat. “Ven Johnny get hold of you…”

“Ah, but you and Alpha have parted ways.”

“He vill come for me.”

“Oh, I do hope so. We’ve sent him an invitation, but I fear he’ll not make it past the thorns. Only my men know the way through.”

“Ja,” Wulf agreed. “Dat is vy he follow them in.”

El Scorpion laughed out loud. “Followed them? What nonsense is this. The two of you argued and he… he… Where did he go?”

Wulf grinned horribly.

“Drop him!” El Scorpion insisted. “Drop him in…!”

Rattle-Jake ran for the lever which held the hoist, but a shot rang out and he dropped dead.

“Alpha!” El Scorpion bellowed.

Another shot blasted one of the chains which held Wulf and he swung on the other, landing boots first on another bandit. Tarant Ella ran at him, waving his own hammer with two of her unbroken arms.

“Ah, cucumber; I am thanking you,” Wulf said. He caught the hammer in the middle of the shaft and rolled back, flipping Tarant Ella over his head to fall screaming into the Well. He wedged the spike on the base of his hammer into a chain link and smashed his remaining bonds. “Now Vulf has his Happy Stick again.”

Shot after shot blazed from the mist, striking down the bandits. They fired back wildly, but still the shooting continued. Wulf laid into the gang from behind, swinging his hammer with deadly strength.

“Kill him!” El Scorpion screamed. “Why can’t you kill him?”

The last bandit hit the ground.

“Johnny is having der sharp eyes,” Wulf said.

“We heard about your misty kingdom and thought I might have an edge here.” Johnny Alpha emerged from the mist, his burning eyes as red as the fog around him. “When we couldn’t get past the thorns, it seemed best to wait for an invitation.”

“But… we could have killed your friend.”

Wulf guffawed. “Is incredible how few people do der smart thing ven they think you are de drunkard.”

El Scorpion shrieked in anger. “Well-Kin!” he called. “Rise up and devour these interlopers. Rise and…” He fell silent as Wulf struck him in the head with his hammer, but a sound of hissing and slithering rose louder and louder from the Well.

“Look out, Johnny!” Wulf cried. “It is der verdammt Hel serpents. Dey vill kill us both.”

“Not if I can help it,” Johnny replied. “Time trap, maximum field.” He tossed the device into the open Well mouth; moments later the trap activated. Twenty feet down the first wave of serpents were caught in the trap, writhing up and down in a constant repetition of their last two seconds of existence, creating a hissing, slithering barrier which blocked the Well shaft completely.

*

The Strontium Dogs dragged the bandits back to New Starfall and handed them over to the marshal. The man avoided looking at them as he counted out the money.

“Lot of good men died trying to bring that one in,” he spat. “Figures it would take someone as bad as him to do it.”

Johnny made no reply.

“I don’t care vat they say,” Wulf assured Johnny. “You are der good man, Johnny. And der good friend.”

“I could say the same of you,” Johnny replied.

“Vat Scorpion said about der mutants. I don’t…”

“I know,” Johnny assured him. “You put yourself in the viper’s nest and trusted me to fetch you out. That says a lot more than any words from a bandit chief. Now, let’s get off this rock before we outstay our welcome, partner.”

“Ja. Partner.”


End file.
